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Fill in the Blanks

FOR college applicants who haven’t engaged in many extracurricular activities, turning to the section of the Common Application where they are encouraged to list such pursuits can cause a bit of a flutter in the stomach.

This year’s application includes 12 blank fields set aside for “Extracurricular Activities & Work Experience.” What of the applicant who has done only a few things, however intensively?

“The perception is that you have to fill in all the blanks,” Jennifer Delahunty, the dean of admissions at Kenyon College in Ohio, told me recently. “What we hate to see,” she said, “is when students do things like check ‘9th, 10th, 11th and 12th grades’ and then write ‘personal reading.’ Yes, we’re glad you’re a reader. But it looks decidedly like filler.”

Instead, Ms. Delahunty and her counterparts say, students should feel free to leave some white space, and at no risk to their chances of admission. In fact, on this year’s online version of the Common Application, clicking on the oversize yellow question mark in the activity section will open a popup box under the statement, “I am concerned that I will be at a disadvantage if I do not complete all 12 activity fields.” It is followed by a soothing message from the administrators of the application, assuring applicants that “the availability of 12 fields is not intended to imply that you should list 12 activities.”

As Monica C. Inzer, the dean of admissions at Hamilton College in New York and a member of the Common Application board, explained: “We’d rather see depth than a longer list. I think students think we want well-rounded kids. We do. But we really want a well-rounded class. That could be lots of people who have individual strengths. Distinction in one area is good, and better than doing a lot of little things.”

The space for activities on this year’s Common Application, which is accepted by more than 400 colleges and universities, is greater than in past editions. For the first time, the application combines extracurricular activities (previously seven lines) and work experience (previously four) into one 12-line section.

One reason for the revision: “So there would be no implied hierarchy of importance between extracurriculars (formerly listed first) and work experience,” Rob Killion, executive director of the Common Application, wrote in an e-mail.

The change is intended to benefit applicants like the one to Kenyon a few years ago “who had no activities, save 25 hours working at the family gas station each week,” Ms. Delahunty said. “We know that’s all that the student could do.” He was admitted.

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Moreover, the combined work-and-play section permits students to rank all their activities “in their order of importance to you”; in such a way, a job might take precedence over work on the school yearbook.

Ultimately, what are admissions deans hoping to see in this section of the application?

“We’d rather see a marathon than a bunch of sprints,” Ms. Delahunty said — and no, for those of you who run track and cross-country, she wasn’t speaking literally. “We’d rather see a student who has been engaged over a couple of years in an activity rather than someone who goes to 12 different meetings in a month and doesn’t really dig deep into one activity.”

While colleges know that students are going to try things that don’t work out, they ultimately hope to find evidence that “something seized you and you stayed with it,” said Ms. Delahunty, the editor of a recently published series of essays for parents, “I’m Going to College — Not You.”

While leadership is prized, rank-and-file participation counts, too. “Not everybody is going to be president of a club or captain of a team,” Ms. Inzer said. “We’re looking for signs of commitment, a purpose to what you do.”

Just as significant may be how students respond to the request that they “briefly elaborate on one” activity or work experience in four lines or less.

Eric J. Furda, the dean of admissions at the University of Pennsylvania, said he hoped to glean from the answer what a student learned from that experience.

“They’re not going to differentiate themselves by listing that they were on the student newspaper and were editor in chief; there are other editors in chief of the student newspaper,” Mr. Furda said. “Talking about that experience on the application is a way the student is going to differentiate himself or herself.”

It may demoralize some applicants to hear that the extra space was motivated partly by those students who not only filled in all the lines allotted for their non-academic lives, but also attached a résumé with even more details. Still, giving too much information to admissions officers already on information overload­ — remember, they may read upward of 1,000 applications in just a few weeks — can backfire.

“It’s our hope,” Mr. Killion said, “that some students will no longer feel the need to send a résumé.”